Wild, weird and scary: Tokyo's 5 strangest theme restaurants

The problem with Michelin Stars -- and Tokyo’s
restaurants have more of them than any other city in the world -- or even the
Pellegrino rankings, is that they don't always spell fun.

Dare we say it, but most of us probably don't particularly
care for the stuffy dress codes and stick-in-ass wait staff. Instead, let’s
shove the gourmet menu to one side and get our laughing gear around these five
fun-time Tokyo theme restaurants.

Alcatraz
ER

One of the first theme restaurants to open in Tokyo,
Alcatraz ER is, as its name suggests, styled after a prison hospital. A prison
hospital from hell, that is.

The menu includes human intestines (OK, it’s an unfeasibly
long sausage in a kidney dish), a penis on a bed of lettuce (another
sausage, suggestively carved) and various impossibly spicy delectables.

As for the drinks, the Nounai Hassha (“brain buster”) is a
vodka-based cocktail in a life-size mannequin head, while the Hitori Asobi (literally,
“play by yourself”) is a wine cocktail served with, um, a couple of
vibrators.

One thing to keep in mind -- you don’t want to get on the
wrong side of the wicked nurses, who have a habit of pulling down unruly
customers’ trousers to administer an injection from a gigantic syringe. You
have been warned.

OK
Bokujo

OK Bokujo caters to the child in all of us.The worlds of cosplay and barbecue collide at this Kanda
eatery. Halfway between a traditional yakiniku joint and a hostess bar, OK
Bokujo allows Tokyo’s hardcore otaku obsessives to dine in style. Waitresses dressed as anime characters grill bite-size chunks of meat at the
table and blow on them gently before popping them into the customer’s mouth.

A mere ¥3,500 gets you a yakiniku set, and you’ll be encouraged to
buy drinks for the waitresses, who take turns to sit at your table and keep the
conversation flowing and peppered with plenty of geek speak.

Every now and then, the girls get up together and dance. And
for just ¥500, you can hire a costume of your own and join in the fun.

The food’s not amazing, but frankly, it’s the most fun you
can have with your clothes -- sorry, costume -- on in central Tokyo.

Ninja

We presume that's not just a list of what's on the menu at Ninja.Back in the days of feudal Japan, ninja were top-class
assassins who also made excellent sushi. That’s the premise at Ninja, an
Akasaka eatery where the food is as robust as the "fortress" in which it’s
served.

The restaurant is surprisingly immersive, set in a dark
maze-like cave designed to look like a ninja hideout, complete with treasure
chests and a secret bridge.

Many dishes are a blur of flames or smoking dry ice, but the
sushi really is fantastic. Also recommended are the special stone-boiled soup
(a suitably rustic wooden bowl of meat and greens cooked over a hot stone) and
the shuriken grissini (grissini sticks with shuriken throwing stars, obviously). Warning -- overeating will hamper your agile
reflexes.

To top it off, an illusionist visits each table to
perform magic tricks, and all the staff get properly into character, sneaking
around the corridors as if preparing to knock off some shogun who’s gotten too
big for his britches. Brilliantly, Ninja also does wedding parties.

The
Lockup

Clearly, there's no dress code at The Lockup restaurant -- that T-shirt's a disgrace.Nothing works up an appetite like handcuffs. So at
The Lockup -- which has branches in Shibuya, Shinjuku, Omiya and Ikebukuro -- you’ll be chained to a sexy space cop as she leads you through a B-movie set to
your cell, where you’ll carry out your dining sentence behind bars.

The menu is pretty standard izakaya fare (pizza, salad,
various grilled meats), but often pepped up with lashings of super-spicy
habanero sauce to leave your lips tingling.

To be honest, the quality doesn't always match the slightly
high prices (expect to spend roughly ¥3,000 a head), but then, what would you
expect of prison food?

The drinks are fun, especially the Jintai Jikken (“human experiment”)
cocktail, a chemistry set of colored liquids served in test tubes with a beaker for mixing them all up.

And take care when the lights go out -- the haunted
corridors hold all sorts of surprises.

Arabian
Rock

Arabian Rock -- the Middle East as Disney imagined it.From the company behind The Lockup comes this chain with an
Arabian theme, although the main reference material appears to be Disney’s
animated movie “Aladdin.”

At the entrance to each of the Shinjuku, Omiya and Ueno
locations you’ll find a golden lamp -- rub this to summon a waiter in tunic and
pantaloons (much more efficient than simply bellowing “open sesame”).

Inside, it's all Persian rugs, warmly plastered walls and
wrought-iron trimming, with your private booth gently curtained off and
scattered with cushions. It’s perfectly inviting for a long Arabian night.

And as you’d expect by now, there are also some quirky
drinks, including a Magic Lantern set that lets you mix up your own
sweet’n’sticky colorful cocktails. The selection of hookah pipes, sadly, is
decorative only.